


Treatment

by BlueSteelFairy



Category: RWBY
Genre: Post Season 4, Season 4 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 08:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11894043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSteelFairy/pseuds/BlueSteelFairy
Summary: After Salem's most recent treatment and test, Cinder Fall considers how she got to where she is, if her goals are the same as when she begun, and what or who is at stake now...





	Treatment

_‘You'll stay here and continue your treatment.’_  
  
Treatment. Cinder wasn't sure how it worked, only that she didn't like being trapped in one place.  She didn't like this place or how Salem treated her people. And she'd always been sympathetic about the creatures of Grimm. The way her teacher used them, the way she used people…  
  
When Salem first found her, Cinder had been awed and inspired by her dark and powerful elegance. She had been a child, only fourteen, filled with anger and a sense of powerlessness. Then, the way Salem could decimate with only words, had been all she wanted.  
  
_“I want to be stronger. I want to be powerful. I want to be feared.”_  
  
Just like Salem. She had trained Cinder to fight. To be a strategist. To use dust infused tokens. To strike, torture, and kill.  
  
Another four years passed and she saw a thief take a ring before the merchant’s eyes. A very special semblance. When she asked Salem about taking an apprentice, she offered the ability as why. Not because she'd empathized. She didn't realize it then. A teenage girl struggling to survive in a world that didn't care, had forsaken her.  
  
She had wanted to do for Emerald what she perceived Salem doing for her. Giving her a cause. Helping her live, not just survive.  
  
Then they'd found Mercury. She had been shocked by what had been done to him by his own father. He would join them, she'd insist for his talents. When Emerald objected, Cinder had struck her, as she had seen Salem do when someone questioned her own recruitment. She was inclined to say it had been Watts.  
  
It didn’t feel right. But that didn’t make sense. Compassion didn't have a place in Salem’s agenda. Cinder would have sworn she had none left after her first kill. It had been so long since she cared about anything, even herself. That was why she hadn’t feared the Grimm after-well, after she lost everything as a girl.  
  
Beacon fell. She had admired the girl she had struck down, but she had gotten in her way. That was about when things stopped going as planned. Perhaps Torchwick wasn’t her favorite person, but his disappearance and presumed death wasn’t a pleasant thing. She had not been as unstoppable as Salem as promised. There had been an almost fatal weakness, one she should have been more notified of.  
  
But that wasn’t what worried her. Cinder had always been resolved to the probability she would perish. It was better to die for her cause, then to live ignoring what had happened to her. But her ‘cause’ had changed, hadn’t it? When Salem found her, she had wanted power to destroy her enemies, no matter what it cost her or who was hurt in the process. It was selfish, but she accepted that.  
  
When had it become about changing the world? It was true, she always suspected that would be a side effect, or the method of vengeance. But at some point she stopped prioritizing it. Winning power yes, but avenging her father was distant second or third.  
  
Now she knew. She saw their faces, the shock and horror, at the monsters Salem controlled. Cinder had known the usual Grimm for as long as she could remember-Ursa, Nevermore, Beowolf-but the ones her teacher controlled? Those were different. And it seemed like she had created them, though she had never asked about it.  
  
Emerald and Mercury had not signed up for this. Had Cinder signed up for this? After watching Tyrian’s mad massacre when Salem informed him she was disappointed and walked away, she didn’t want that sort of power anymore. Once Salem’s cold, callous behavior had impressed her, and Cinder had wanted to be like her. To destroy even allies with a few well placed words.  
  
Now-now she didn’t know anything anymore. She knew she was the Fall Maiden. And she knew there was only one way Salem could truly threaten her now.  
  
_No. Two ways._  
  
The last trial, Emerald having to project the illusion of Ruby for Cinder to destroy-what had been the purpose? It wasn’t a simpering girl Cinder feared, not a defeated variant of the huntress. It was that the Huntress had silver eyes, and those apparently were the one thing she had to fear.  
  
Her left arm had been useless since the attack, among other things, and it was so covered. Cinder had nightmares about waking up to find it the same pallor as Salem, the same dark veins running through it. For all she knew, that was exactly what the treatment would do to her.  
  
She couldn’t become Salem. And she wouldn’t see her students become like the her teachers’, either.  
  
The door to Cinder’s chambers opened, and she looked up from her seat. Her apprentices entered, both Emerald and Mercury looking uneasy, upset. She couldn’t blame them, in retrospect. Cinder stood slowly to cross to Emerald. She spoke hoarsely, for her apprentice to repeat to Mercury. She had thought long and hard about it. But now she held tight a packet of papers with a map. Where better to hide then a place everyone thought no longer existed?  
  
“ _You two need to leave. Soon. I’ll handle the fall out. Go. She won’t find you there. None of them know it exists. Only I do. And we already know she can’t force answers from me_.”


End file.
